> there’s a theme or insinuation (not saying you’re saying this) that these companies “stole work” (which definitely a lot of copyright violations sure), but it’s just unclear to me what principles or legal frameworks these companies or institutions should have used to develop the technology.

Oh, I'm absolutely one of the people saying that a lot of companies stole a lot of work, and that it would be better to dissolve them and make all their assets public domain, than to stand for it.

The legal and moral framework is to ask for permission, accept "no". The same framework they use against you in an instant, with an army of lawyers, when you do to them what they did to everybody.

None of this in principle, technically, requires slurping up everything and ignoring consent, that just made it quicker and cheaper, that's why they did it. While they did that, I'm sure other labs made progress in the same direction at much smaller pace, in a defensible manner, of which they should get to keep the fruit.